Solo towed the bottle off the coast of Tenerife in the Canary Islands and left it at the mercy of the currents. Inside the bottle is a case of Solo and a 12 sq m letter in various languages explaining that whoever finds the giant bottle wins a ‘finder’s party’ in the nearest town and lists a phone number to call.
The company also set up a website where users can post their guess as to where they think the bottle will eventually land, with a correct guess winning one real bottle of Solo for each nautical mile the oversized one travels.
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You can’t just dump a giant bottle into the ocean (at least not publicly) without taking a few legal precautions first. Solo consulted shipping insurance companies, ocean researchers and marine biologists to ensure that the vessel fit the proper requirements for a drifting object in international waters.
As such, the enormous bottle is equipped with navigation lights, an Automatic Identification System, a radar reflector and GPS tracking technology, all powered through solar panels on the top.
It also has a customised camera that’s programmed to tweet a 360-degree panorama every eight hours and is outfitted with nozzles that clear the lenses with fresh water from an onboard tank.
Solo will continue to track the bottle as it travels the Atlantic Ocean and has stated it will collect it whenever and wherever it washes up. The company has even offered to tow it to shore if it nears a coastline that prohibits unmanned vessels from landing.
“Hopefully, we will not end up breaking Captain Brown’s record for the oldest message in a bottle,” said Solo CEO Joakim Sande. “It roamed the sea for 97 years and 309 days.”
Source: Solo
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